For those of you who haven’t been there, a son’s wedding is an amazing experience.  (I’m sure a daughter’s wedding is as well, but that is still future for us.)    This past weekend on Bald Head Island our Phil took Mary Catherine as his wife.  My  enjoyment was up close and personal not only as Dad, but as officiant.

What captures my heart this morning is the transformation of our son from child to adolescent to husband.  He has become a nurturing, responsible man who knows who he is and understands how to love and care for a wife – every bit his equal partner.  They wrote and sang a song at their rehearsal dinner.  Click here to listen!

I find myself asking, “Where does that come from – that capacity to love?”  We are born to love as birds are born to fly.  That’s the point that “Papa” (God the Father) makes to Mack in chapter six of The Shack, a novel by William P. Young.

Mack has some preconceptions to overcome when he encounters the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in the shack.  Papa reminds Mack that if God were not eternally three, God would not be capable of love.

But the members of the Trinity don’t look anything like Mack imagined, except maybe Jesus.  In fact, this is one place where the book has become controversial.  Can Papa be a large black woman?  As Elijah experiences in 1 Kings 19, God sometimes shows up in very surprising ways.

God showed up for me this weekend in the eyes and vows of two twenty-somethings who display the image of God in wonderful ways and remind me again of the joys of loving and being loved.